In the 1998 NFL Draft, the Pittsburgh Steelers selected LSU OG Alan Faneca with the No. 26 pick in the first round, and what a great pick that ended up being for the team. Another Hall of Famer in a long list of them coming from the Steelers, and he helped secure a fifth Lombardi trophy for the city in the 2005 season.
His list of accolades is quite impressive, with six first-team All-Pro selections, nine straight Pro Bowl selections, and a spot on the 2000s All-Decade Team. He played for the Steelers for ten seasons before finishing out his career with the New York Jets and the Arizona Cardinals.
He sat down with Rob King for an interview on the Steelers’ website and was asked what it was like to be part of a team that imposed their will on the opposition with a strong running attack.
“To be drafted to Pittsburgh, an organization and a team that had that mindset, I’m so lucky for that, right?” Faneca said. “You could go to a run-and-shoot offense and just kind of fade away as an offensive lineman for what I love to do, so it was so special to be a part of that and to come to a team that was — it’s 3rd and 1, we’re gonna go get that yard, we’re gonna run through you — That’s our mentality, and that’s what we always built on. We come into training camp, and we’re setting that tone and that mindset for that.”
.@afan66 sat down with Rob King to talk about his football career, his teammates, and more. @pepsi pic.twitter.com/crbN6VqNVk
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) May 20, 2024
Being an offensive lineman in the NFL is a somewhat thankless job. You do a lot of the heavy lifting to make the offense function correctly, but the other guys get all of the attention and the glory. That wasn’t necessarily the case in Pittsburgh, a blue-collar town known for having stellar offensive linemen and a physical rushing attack on offense.
For almost all of Faneca’s career, he had Jerome Bettis at running back. They didn’t call him “The Bus” for no reason. He fit perfectly with what the Steelers were trying to do, which was imposing their will on defenses with a physical attack. The two are now immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame together as a perfect symbol of what those early 2000s teams were all about on offense.
Over the course of his ten seasons in Pittsburgh, they were in the top 10 for rushing yards in every season but one. They were in the top five in five of those seasons and earned the rushing crown in 2001 with 2,774 rushing yards. Faneca was a large part of making that happen, and he feels lucky to have been put in that position.
